Whistleblowers Will Get $150,000

WASHINGTON (CN) – The SEC awarded $25,000 to three people who helped stop a bogus hedge fund, and the whistleblowers can expect $125,000 more, the SEC said. The whistleblowers were awarded 5 percent of the money the SEC will collect from its enforcement action against Locust Offshore Management and its CEO Andrey C. Hicks. Hicks pleaded guilty in December 2012 to five counts of wire fraud. He was sentenced to 40 months in federal prison and forfeited $170,000 that already had been seized. The three whistleblowers will get $8,505 apiece from this, and another $125,000 or so – 15 percent of Hicks’s additional assets, which are estimated at $845,000 – when they are seized, the SEC said in a statement. The SEC did not explain why the anonymous whistleblowers got just 5 percent of the first seizure and 15 percent of what’s to come. It did not release their names to protect the confidentiality of its whistleblower reward program.